Can JD.com’s smart home layout last long-term?

In the third week of March, JD.com, which occupies an important position in the domestic e-commerce business, once again made efforts in the field of smart hardware, released new policies for its smart platform JD+, and announced the launch of new smart home kits, striving to create a complete service circle around smart homes.

In the past year, whether it was the JD+ plan, Smart Cloud, JD Welink App, or various crowdfunding projects related to entrepreneurs, JD has been constantly making moves in the layout of smart hardware and smart homes. However, as "JD Mall", a platform that started with online shopping, whether JD has the ability to implement the smart home that has always been in the conceptual stage is a question mark.

Winning by numbers does not mean winning

On March 18, JD Intelligent Group released several reports on smart hardware, hoping to use big data to comprehensively analyze the current smart product market. These reports did allow us to see a lot of "big numbers."

For example, there are currently 1,390 wearable products on JD.com, 673 smart sockets, 300 network boxes, and 118 smart cameras. According to data previously released by JD.com, they have completed the access of more than 300 smart products, and more than 1,000 are being connected, including a large number of smart home products.

The number of products on JD.com's platform is undoubtedly huge, but the vast majority of the current smart hardware products are due to the position-taking actions taken by various manufacturers after a series of events such as Google's acquisition of Nest. Most of the new forms of equipment cannot hit the user's pain points, which shows that the brand attitude is more meaningful, and quality is not proportional to quantity. The industry benchmark Apple has occupied the market with one product in most fields, which is the best proof.

In addition, a large number of products does not necessarily mean a large number of users. The most obvious example is undoubtedly the Internet box, that is, the smart TV product. The 300 products on sale at JD.com may not be able to compare with the user activity of one product, Tmall Magic Box, which has the highest attention in the box market. Without users, how can we talk about layout?

Open platform or marketing tool?

The smart home wave in 2014 provided opportunities for many emerging brands to enter the field of smart hardware, and JD.com's crowdfunding project undoubtedly gave these new forces a good opportunity to promote their products to the market.

However, smart hardware, especially smart home products, are different from mobile phones or tablets. Their value to users needs to be demonstrated within a platform and needs to be connected with other products. A crowdfunding platform that focuses on marketing obviously cannot meet these needs.

JD.com’s efforts in smart home can certainly be seen as an open platform that aggregates products from different brands, but looking back, it is this platform that makes it possible for the products on JD.com to have a market.

JD's current solutions, whether it is implanting JD's smart modules in hardware or connecting different devices to the same App, are more like a remedy for the shortcomings of existing products. Its envisioned "upgrading the current door-to-door after-sales service team to JD's smart home installation team" will never be as simple as recruiting couriers. JD is now sending out signals of its smart home layout. In a sense, part of the reason is still to create a living space for the many products on its crowdfunding platform.

Is it too late for JD.com to develop smart products?

To this day, although JD.com intends to step out from behind the scenes of the smart home industry, it still gives people the feeling that it is building a "shelf" that looks like a platform. JD.com has neither system-level support like Alibaba's YunOS, nor products like Tmall Box that are directly related to its own brand. It can be said that JD.com not only did not consider touching the ecosystem from the beginning, but also had no other experience accumulation besides sales channels to support the development of its smart platform.

The most important thing for the smart home industry is unified standards and entry points, which is also the main factor that makes many Internet companies and technology companies decisively enter the market when they hear the news.

However, JD’s intelligent layout is essentially a variation of “JD Mall”, relying on and emphasizing sales channels and financial support for existing products. Its key words revolve around providing investment and financing, marketing, supply chain and other resources. Its core functions do not have much overlap with intelligence and product ecosystems.

2015 is expected to be an important turning point for the smart home industry. JD.com itself has proposed ambitious goals such as "explosive sales growth and an industry market size of nearly 30 billion." However, most beginners in the smart home field a year ago have gradually begun to have good and bad performance. JD.com, after all, is still just a beginner, except for being able to produce some data worth discussing in the PPT.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.